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Alvarado Writing Responses

5/7/2021

0 Comments

 
Dear Readers and Writers,

You may or may not know that I have a deep affinity for Latin American culture, and art in particular, and am moved by the intensity and variety of creativity. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to both Peru and Colombia, and Mexico is the home of my heart, my favourite place in all the world. I spend quite a bit of my art history passion in Latin American paintings, sculptures, and photography, both pre-Colombian and post. 

Clearly, many share the excitement and emotion I feel in Hispanic art, because challenges for Frida Kahlo and others received a huge response. I was surprised that this much quieter Peruvian painting opened the floodgates, too. I had such a wonderful time reading through a surprising number of submissions- I love how much poetry and fiction one painting can inspire.

I have included many pieces here. I  always feel guilty for those wonderful responses I didn't include. For every selection, so many more are turned away! Please understand how grateful we are for your participation. Knowing that my passion for art inspires you means the world to me even when I can't include your work this time. 

​love, Lorette
Picture
Women Making Textiles, by Mario Urteaga Alvarado (Peru) 1939

ora et labora

toil and spin
we begin
wool, stone
cloth and bone
fibers break
fingers ache
scarlet thread
daily bread
sisters bend
knots end
warp and weft
right, left
kneel and weep
till and keep
 
the slanted ladder forms a stair
work is prayer

​Kelly Scott Franklin

Kelly Scott Franklin teaches literature at Hillsdale College. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commonweal, Driftwood, Thimble Literary Magazine, Iowa City Poetry in Public, and elsewhere.

​ 
Gifts From Pachamama
                       
                                               "When the doors of the storehouse opened,
                                                 Clouds flew out like birds..."

                                                                               Ecclesiastes

     How must it feel    to be so high in the Andes
     that the sky touches the horizon    with mountain tops

     in the background?     The women who are making textiles
     seem to be unchanged     by the 20th century, dedicated
 
      to recreating the patterns of the Incas     the herring-bone
      in red and gold.    And though the women's lips don't move

      in Alvarado's painting --    are immobile,  part of a formidable
      silence at high altitudes      do they pray, in quietude,

       to the inner earth, and to the outer earth     blessing
       their materials and their craft;     and to the sun, the moon,

        the wind, the lightning, and the rain;    for the rain god
        to delay his gift of precipitation     if winter ((May to September)

        fattens the clouds by mistake    during the dry season --
        so it won't rain, and the textile workers      can continue

        their work outside, in natural light     weaving threads
        in madder yellow     and the earthy-ochre of a thick

         zig-zagging pathway.  One woman in the painting
         has climbed down a ladder      from the storehouse

         where ritual elements --     hummingbird feathers
         and sequins like the shining lake --    are saved

         in small baskets     until the month when they're added
         to the textiles as sacred decoration      for a fire offering;

         strands woven to be burned     to honor the sun god --
         a culture hero --     during ceremonies to Pachamama --

          Mother Earth....     The woman who climbed down the ladder
          was wearing a hat     with a wide-brim that acknowledges authority,

          and power --     the hat covering her head contained thoughts:
          if you change your hat     you must change your mind,

          an old woman reading coca leaves told her     describing a future
          where she would travel down the mountain     to the fenced-in pens

         filled with guinea pigs     where there was a caretaker who --
         it was said -- could make miracles;     would choose and weigh

         two healthy guinea pigs.     Do not roast them --  he would caution her --
         even if you are very hungry.    They are the day god's magic totems.

         You must put one of them     in each of the hands of your small son
         so he can feel how their fur is soft --     softer than coarse black hair --

         how their hearts beat in their bodies --     faster 
         than his own heart's comforting thump.     Everything you do,

         down the mountain     must please the gods of night and day
         who have argued     so the night god has made your boy blind;

          but the god of daylight     who speaks with the wisdom
          of Pachamama     sees all colors in darkness, in the beautiful,

          black, unseeing eyes of the boy     who she promises will feel color
          when his fingertips recognize the power of animals    as he touches

          the guinea pigs --  1 and 2....     So it was that the boy's mother
          went back to work      and took off her wide-brimmed hat.

           She set it down, carefully     behind her on the rough ground
           of the courtyard in the painting     and picked up the herring-bone

           textile, touching each diamond and chevron     like it was a magic
           stone, one of Pachamama's amulets --     measuring its length,

           its sturdiness and its strength --      woven long
           enough so she can dress her child     in handmade cloth

           and wrap-him-round in herring-bone;     so she can carry
           him like a part of her --  a cocoon --     secure against her body

           for his first trip, her lips near his ears     as she whispers
           the size and shape of everything she sees     using words for color;

           this, the miracle man, the day god     and the fortune reader
           promise is the Pachamama's gift --
                                                                          nature's way of giving second sight.

               Laurie Newendorp
           
Laurie Newendorp once tried to take her children to Macchu Picchu to see Haley's Comet, coming for a second time in Hirohito's lifetime, but the trip was economically impossible, and she lost a large deposit to the Natural Science Museum. The atmosphere and high altitude of the Andes must be mystical, and although the herring-bone of the textile being made by the Peruvian women in Alvarado's painting is an "everyday" pattern, different from the bright designs in festival fabrics, the mystery of the Incas, and the voices of their nature gods, surely whisper where mothers weave long "belts" to wrap around their babies to secure the child's position when being carried.

​**

Too Late to Pray 
 
It’s too late to pray 
so we sift through  
the fabric and weave  
of our ancestry 
trying to forge a 
new history 
where we have 
meaning and a name  
where we’re not  
slurs or shell casings 
where the same rain 
that falls on your head 
lands just the same on ours 
no more sprayed bullets  
or crimson on the corner 
no more sons  
and daughters 
dying in vain while  
each momma  
screams and wails  
screams and wails  
screams and wails 
screams and wails  
as one bloody day  
bleeds into  
the very next

Len Kuntz

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of four books, most recently the story collection, THIS IS WHY I NEED YOU, out now from Ravenna Press.  You can find more of his writing at http://lenkuntz.blogspot.com 

**

​Shadows in La Plaza 

Three sisters in the afternoon sun
intricate lines on lines
diamonds in their hands
shoulders lean
backs ache
but the work goes on
each weaving
her own message
as the pattern stretches
across the hot sand
the sun passes over the work
a knife.
Three shadows cross my soul
bending, bowing over the work
strong faces, hands
the fingerweaving passes
silent among them. 
Three fates 
as dusk nears
the weaving crosses
the silent plaza
but eyes watch from the shadows
eyes wait.
The one who had begun
lets the threads slip
from bent fingers
the one who had continued
holds knowingly
story is all
the one who must
cut the thread
slight sobbing in the air
always
the story must end.
​
Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside;  trekker of wild things in the north woods, former librarian in a log cabin library.  In addition to academic publications, she has published poetry in Canada, England, the United States and China.  Chapbook: The Lost Italian and the Sound of Words, Brighter Path Publishers, and numerous poems in zines and anthologies.

**

to make a ladder 

we must weave what is between the rungs with fingers we have not always had 
here in this world where silence is larger than the steps between, and so we begin 
as children, choosing words like stitches, placing them on our tongues, behind 
our lips before we pierce the air with them, pierce the world with them as we do 
the cloth we weave, one hand holding for the other, one finger kissing another, 
the needle sharp as a tongue can be, a tongue we know, a tongue we do not yet 
know, both wrestling words into angles and stripes that can sear or save us, yes 
save us too as they are stitched into our ears, our cloth, stitch by stitch, to leave 
a long line of words dripped or stripped from our lips, our tongues, to be stitched 
again to suit or wound around our necks, to show what steps we make between 
red and no, between a hat and the blue sky of winter in the story of we, of me, 
of who I am, I am.  

Mary Hutchins Harris

Mary Hutchins Harris is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Kakalak, Antietam Review, Main Street Rag, Poemeleon, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Spillway, Seeking: Poetry and Prose inspired by Jonathan Green, and Feminine Rising: Voice of Power and Invisibility, as well as in other print and on-line publications. She is an Interdisciplinary Studies Adjunct professor in the Lesley University, Cambridge, MA Low-Residency MFA program and on the faculty of the YMCA Downtown Writer's Center in Syracuse, NY .

**

The Homecoming

Our dead husband Amuru will return tonight. Five months of mourning, tonight we will celebrate. Drum beats will resound, rocks ring with ancient chants. November, the month of the dead. The young men will carry their Kuraka, head of the clan, shoulder high. I, Chasca, his youngest wife, will drape his mummified body with the scarf. 

My fingers travel over the fabric, baby alpaca and vicuna fleece, cool and soft as the cloud forests.  Smooth burnished orange shimmering with gold thread inlay, old marks honouring the sun god Inti. The underside is a mirror image, but embroidered with the protecting eye. ​

Pisco and Atoc work to my left, heads bowed. Atoc scans the material for imperfections, silent as the fox for which she was named. Pisco sings as she works, lullabies for the babies she never birthed. We have prepared cakes of maize and lamb's blood, shaped and cooked in the fire pit at sunrise. We cried for Amuru when the sky glowed crimson, and moon dipped to the dawn. We will cry no more.

I feel the flutter, butterfly wings beating, deep inside. I move my hand to rest on the curve of my belly, and smile. The priest, from The Sacred Valley has foreseen a boy to take his father’s place. He has seen in the fire that he will lead the new rebellion. A black condor waits, watching, black against terracota, priestly collar radiating white. My fingers grope for the strip of leather round my neck. It holds the silver crucifix, brand of the conqueror. Tearing it from my throat, I throw it to the dust and spit.

Tonight the purple chica will stain our lips, the flames flitter and lick, and shadows spin in air drunk with balsam spice. Dancing, chanting, cadence climbing, life and death will combine, creeping from the earth to the High-Priest’s ray-splayed disc.

Crouched on the cliff the condor waits, ready to swoop and feast on the carrion. 

Margaret Timoney

Margaret Timoney writes from Donegal, on the North West coast of Ireland.

**


Braided Bonds

It was another monotonous day.
The trio sat side by side,
Working in silence,
For their hearts could read
Each other’s thoughts.

The sturdy thread in their hands
Preserved each unspoken word:
Apathy, sincerity, and loyalty…
Meticulously woven into the fabric,
Disguised as creative patterns.

Their devotion to their craft
Muffled any questions and
Stifled any curiosities
That a different life was
Within their grasp.

Erika Bodden

Erika Bodden is of Colombian and Peruvian descent,  grew up in Pittsburgh, and currently lives in Tampa, Florida. Consequently, she is a loyal Steelers fan for life, but also a Bucs fan! In addition to writing, her hobbies include activities associated with nature, music, art, and fitness. My must-haves in life include: sunshine, coffee, dogs, music, and Star Trek.

**

Tapestry

They wanted the work to illustrate their lives,
the rich tapestry of the lives they lived.
They chose the colours carefully
sometimes rich and vibrant,
sometimes dark
just like life.
They wove them into zig zag patterns
up and down,
up and down.
They thought it seemed true,
true to life.
They wove the cloth longer
longer and longer
used all the warp
and reached the end.
It seemed true,
true to life.

Lynn White

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

**

Church
 
Faces rapt and inward, 
their long band of cloth 
lies obedient in hand 
after hand, then loops 
over an arm, as a trinity 
of women adore.
Two are on their knees in 
a liturgy of weavers’ 
worship.  One presides, 
luminous and absorbed, 
chief celebrant of their 
ritual by which design 
is divined through laced 
thread and play of color: 
holy light and eye’s power 
blend tones and surprise, 
but the women, silent –   
revere not by word but by 
finger-tip and thumb:
they see the beautiful 
with their fingers. 
What have they made?  
Perhaps, trim 
for chieftain’s cape, sash 
for queen’s tunic, stole 
for a priest’s vestment.
We are not told. 
Their hands enfold 
the sacred.  That is 
enough to know.

Johanna Caton

​Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun and lives in England: she is an American and lived in the U.S. until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to the U. K.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover Literary Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, on The Catholic Poetry Room webpage at www.integratedcatholiclife.org, and in other venues, both online and print.  

**


Dream Weavers 

I climb the ladder to my roof and watch my mother and her sisters weave together the dreams of the village. They work quietly in the dry heat, their fingers stained with red clay. In the mornings they take turns braiding each other’s hair before the sun comes up. Three strands to make a bond that will last until dusk. What else can they do but create. Their fingers, like hips, send forth a unique design that will ripple through time and space. For the small boy next door, whose smile is a flash of light behind his dirt-streaked face, they build him a well with clean water. Better yet, a boat that could take him north, to the rich mountains, or up into the clouds. Whichever he prefers. For his mother, whose ankle has swelled to the size of her knee, who leans heavily on a stick carved from the Cinchona tree, a throne fit for a queen. A doctor to perform the simple operation that would stop her senseless pain.  

​I ask my mother what she wants but she says nothing. She is the weaver. She can only give. She is the heart, her sisters are the brain and the stomach. They are one person. They need only the air to summon their stitch. To carry the prayers of the night whisperers to their rooms so that they wake with heads full of colour. This band, this red cloth covered in diamonds, this is their spine, the backbone that holds them together. If one sister pricks her finger on the fibers, they all bleed. Like the elements, they can’t exist without each other. They are earth, and air, and water. I’m thirteen. My fingers are starting to itch. I feel the flames dance in my chest and move my body into patterns. I braid my hair like theirs, take the basket of fabrics into the house every evening. 
 
I watch them from the window. Brown hair flowing in waves under the moonlight. I hear the water splashing, see it flying through the air between them. Their laughter echoes far beyond the village, and into the night.

Kerri Vasilakos​

Kerri Vasilakos is a writer from Long Island, New York who is currently living in Georgia. She earned her BA in English- Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and has had her poems featured in their Creative Writing Clubs Newsletters. Kerri also owns a spiritual counseling business with her fiancé that focuses on holistic healing and energy work. She has a deep faith, and a passion for guiding others along their healing journey. Kerri is also a gifted artist and a cat lover. Her poems have been featured in the Penman Review.

**


Stitch by Stitch   

With heavy eyelids, concentrating, slow,
they scrutinise the cloth to check each thread   
from altar runner, blanket, quilt and bedspread
to clothes for all from chullo cap to toe.
Too much the same? Too many knots and rows? 
Their hands grow numb, but backache’s what they dread,
they crouch and kneel, collapse and sometimes stop dead,
but pick up and continue with the sew. 
It’s hour by hour – enough to focus on,    
like how they built their houses brick by brick
or how they twist and fasten thin black plaits – 
one day they’ll wonder where their time has gone.
With tired eyes and necks which start to crick, 
they stitch and count, ascend and leave such tracks.

Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman has been published on several sites such as Ink, Sweat and Tears, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon and The Ekphrastic Review.  Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf.  She lives in Durham, England.​

**

Woven
 
Her first belt. Before daylight fades and clouds slap the mountainside, three women roll out the delicate cloth, hold it firmly over their gnarled fingers, sense its fragility. Section by section, they examine the quality of its pattern, colour, weave, tension; feel the fine alpaca wool. They remember Maria’s little-girl, sing-song voice counting, laughing, teasing, memorising sequences; they imagine that they are helping her once more to master the knack of threading. In a whisper, they discuss who taught her this design. Grandmother, aunt or mother? All lay claim. All played a part, as did every woman in the village: women and girls together; tending the flock; weaving, spinning, singing, playing, sharing and passing on their stories as they crafted, creating their world.  That’s how they had all learnt. Though none could match the skill of Maria; from her hands, the next generation were beginning to learn… 
 
Years wind back and forth as three women squat and kneel, stretch out on cobbles, ignoring pain; hard as their mountain’s rock, they labour on, eyes downcast; minds, hands, bodies fixed on this task. 
 
Dusk falls. A glowering sky; thunder snarls; a distant flash. Breezes whip away old women’s breath, catch their ankles, make the wooden ladder judder, stir up a blur of ground dust.
 
Time: they roll up her belt, carry it inside; ceremoniously unwinding it, they return it to its maker….
 
lightening -
in a flower-filled room
her corpse.
 
Dorothy Burrows

Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poetry and short plays. This year, her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Spelt Magazine, The Alchemy Spoon, The Poetry Pea Journal, Prune Juice, Failed Haiku and The Wales Haiku Journal. She tweets: @rambling_dot

**

Les Souvenirs of Krishan Nagar/Sant Nagar
 
for my Mother, Mona & my Maternal Aunties, Robina and Samina
 
after Women Making Textiles by Mario Urteaga Alvarado (Peru), 1939 C.E.
 
 
Prosperity that the golden muses gave me was no delusion:
dead, I won’t be forgotten.
— Sappho[1]
 
 
I.                Summoning the Muse
 
       It was time for the due dosage of inspiration for me; hence, The Girls in the respective painting sat exposed on my laptop’s monitor. Whilst I was preoccupied by the thoughts of crafting a poetic- narrative on their activities, The Trio had also managed to engage Mona’s glance, who was merely passing through the dining room en route to the kitchen to mind her housewifery duties and chores. Is it a painting of/from Krishan Nagar/Sant Nagar? – she couldn’t help becoming captivated, they look like Indian Girls from old, old times, are they? … What are they making?
 
II.              Nota bene
 
       This narration is more a transcription of Mona’s memories than anything else really, and also a tribute to the hardships endured by my parents & their parents & their parents, which have subsequently made it possible for me to sit-on-my-bum rather extremely-comfortably now—id est without a worry in the world—so that I could also indulge in the luxuries of crafting this discourse.
 
III.            ! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا  / Those were strange, strange times!
 
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!),
the avalanche of memories is set in motion:
10 children, your Nana & Nani gave birth to /[2]
one of them, boy, was lost to Polio in his infancy /
he had golden brown hair and blue eyes /
my Dada & Dadi had to unwillingly migrate
from Shimla in Himalayas to Lahore, Punjab –
long before the partition of the Subcontinent India in 1947 CE /[3]
but our great-great grandparents – Eisa Khan & Musa Khan –
had migrated from the Central Asia to Hindustan
and served in The Great Mughal Turk Empire
as Vazirs (Ministers) during the late 18th century CE /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
back then, Krishan Nagar & Sant Nagar were founded
as the Modern Model Towns during the British Raj –
a ‘Safe Heaven’ for elites, apparently /
and that’s where my grandparents had decided to settle in Lavapuri /[4]
but the towns also saw the worst cases of massacres
during the 1947 migrations between Baharat and newly born Pakistan –
my Dadi used to share horrifying stories
of murders, rapes, kidnappings and lootings
of the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs alike /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
your Nani had taught me & your Khalas[5]
how to sew with needles: we weren’t so financially affluent,
so had to sew our own clothes using the empty flour-sacks;
the thought of buying ready-made clothes
didn’t exist even in our wildest imaginations /
I had received a first proper gift in my life
in the shape of a Singer’s sewing machine
from your Nana – a wedding gift /
it’s 42+ years old now and is still functional –
I am currently using it to sew a new Kurta-Shalwar[6]
for your father for the upcoming Eid /
your father only lived in the neighbouring borough – Sant Nagar /
initially, i got introduced to him through his younger sister –
we used to attend the same college /
and then, your Nana had become rather fond of him –
since he was a Captain in the military and all /
yes, it was an arranged marriage /
there was a marriage proposal from a business family in the USA, as well,
but your Nana wasn’t too comfortable with the idea
of giving his favourite daughter’s hand to some stranger a million miles away /
we couldn’t even imagine playing with boys in the streets,
let alone falling in love with someone from the neighbourhood
or outside of the borough and getting married to him /
you’ve taken after your Nana –
he used to love books and reading and writing, too /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا 
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
we had a similar looking ladder at our house –
like this one in this painting /
it was made of bamboo – we preferred to use it
to climb to the roof-top
to play ludo or marbles or cards, us sisters /
the staircase was made of mud-bricks
and wasn’t really safe to use –
after every monsoon, if needed a complete renovation /
the roof-top at our house used to especially come to life
during the annual Vasanta Kite Flying Season –
your Mamus[7] even used to come back home
from Germany and Australia and Dubai to attend it /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
 
To Be Continued …
 
Saad Ali
 
Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been educated and brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet and translator. Ali has authored four books of poetry. His new collection of poetry is called Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα(AuthorHouse, 2020). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant, and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese, and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com.

**

Subversive Textiles
 
It’s not only poetry that can get you arrested,
or producing pamphlets against the occupational forces,
it’s weaving your traditional weave.
 
At least that’s what we take away from Peruvian history.
The Spanish, resenting the competition 
for their artisans from home, sought to stamp out
the production by traditional Peruvian artisans
who used vicuña, alpaca… even metallic threads and silk.
 
Peru’s tradition of textile production predates pottery.
10,000 years of the backstrap loom and other techniques 
handed down from generation to generation. 
There were complex embroideries and tapestries with deities
and monsters; influences of their abstracts can even be gleaned
in the Bauhaus school and other 20th century art.

In their weaves, the Inka honoured their ancestors and
Pachamama—the earth mother— as well as the heavens:
the sun, the moon, the stars.
If I were a Quechua maiden, the women of my village
would gift me the result of months of weaving at my wedding.
 
Today you can buy the most intricate patterns, the most vibrant
colours, the most sensual cloths in the markets
of which there are plenty.
The women of Peru remembered.

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2020. Want to find out more? https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

Penelope’s Tapestry
 
Wormholes might exist no larger than a grain of sand 
which could circumvent the laws of space and time.

Albert Einstein

​Thereafter in the daytime she would weave at her great loom, 
but in the night, she would have torches set by, and undo it.

The Odyssey: Book II Lines 104-105
                                                                             

  1. Warp
 
At the excavation of black mud
Out upon the tidal flats
A sour smell of marsh sulfur
Permeates the air
As shovels push down
Through several seasons of silt
And deep within the sodden banks,
Milt deposited from upland slopes,
The black blood of mountain streams
Bled south to harbor’s tongue,
They’re upon the earthen throat,
 
A box is drawn out.
 
Hands fall from the sharpened spades
Knees push against
The swallowing mud,
And a fumbling of hands wrenches off
A latch,
Throwing arched beads of mud
Like black pearls
Against the digger’s faces
That peer in speckled fancy
Beneath mud-swept brows;
 
The box is empty.

  1. Woof
 
A wormhole looms,
Perambulates upon the tidal flats,
As the sweet fragrance of marshmallow
Glistens in the hot throat of August
And a Singularity pierces the ground
And drives on through to the planet’s core
Where lost within the molten mantle,
Milt from the upland slope,
A raw absence of space and time
Diffuses in forces unseen till now,
There enwombed
Within the planet’s arching belly;
 
A loom is inverted.
 
3. Weave
 
Hands rotate upon the tapered spokes
As knees grip against the enclosing center
And across the feet of all living creatures
A latch is wrenched off
And a cover thrown back
To reveal the mud-splattered faces
Peering down
Into the gulping lips of time,
As Penelope’s blackened fingers
Pull warp from woof 
Deceiving and awaiting
Her husband’s return;
 
The box is filled with wool.
Thomas Belton is an author with extensive publications in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, magazine feature writing, science writing, and journalism. His professional memoir, “Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State (Rutgers University Press)” was awarded “Best Book in Science Writing for the General Public” by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. See: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/protecting-new-jerseys-environment/9780813548876
He is a widely published writer of short stories and poetry and has won numerous prestigious awards. He is also a frequent Op-Ed writer for the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

**


The Weavers
 
As so often happens, the blue 
sky dazzles at the edges, 
while the Andes impassively jut
upward in the self-revealing light, 
and a thin ladder leans on a stone 
wall, already in the clouds, 
at rest in an altitude where 
surprise might take hold, whether climbing
to survey as far as the eye
can see in search of visions
where only dreams draw breath, or back down
to dinner and more familiar steps. 
 
In this space, three women kneel
close together, their braided black
hair draping over their bright mantles,
as the shining sun cradles their
whole lives, whether making love, raising
children, or performing rites, as they 
hold a long crimson garment adorned 
with geometric shapes to sense 
and see its beauty and utility. 
 
They look for light in all they do
and catch the common threads stitched each to
each, binding them to other bodies
and the hazy band of dust and gas 
that arcs all around, while they weave
their stories at the boundaries.

Daniel Benyousky

Daniel Benyousky is a poet, English professor, and former therapist. His poetry and prose have been published in The Los Angeles Press, Global Poemic, Paideuma, and Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, among other places. He writes poetry to remember who he is and to know those around him, where language might offer a geography of our experiences.

**

Textile Makers

Let me join you, I would love to entangle 
my text with your text-styling  
and learn from your craft 
how to weave wild thoughts  
into wearable cloths  
in the way you construct  
your graceful artifact. 
 
Oh, I missed, I didn’t stretch well,  
couldn’t catch the piece you extended  
and it fell on the floor; now on its own end  
upon cold stone but thus it can pass  
your palms’ warmth and keep this massive 
edifice engaged over your text-styling page 
 
I can see your undivided attention follows 
each minute threat of thought ,  
while your swift fingers 
dash, pull, join and neat them all together  
at each point and every level:  
here the red leads the team  
and gifts the basic gleam, 
then the gold takes over  
and propels its shine  
in a sharp-minded rhombic line;  
one thread of thought astray –  
and it will all untangle in the sideway. 
 
I can now read your texting:   
you say you didn’t weave flowers or stars, 
but took the language of geometric forms,  
because this is how your mind  
cohered on the move all it loved  
into one common denominator – 
this serendipitous jazzy vector. 
 
Here is my replying texting: 
Your epic faces cohere  
all serendipitous senses – 
I feel the sublime perfection  
of your infinite absorption -   
you give it all, and the text-isle responds in full; 
that complete hearty connection  
I would have loved to join with my affection. 
 
But it wasn’t meant to be –  
the Graces are always only three.

Ekaterina Dukas

Ekaterina Dimitrova lives in London. She uses the publication name Ekaterina Dukas. A graduate in Philology and Philosophy, she is interested in the history of arts, ideas, culture and universalism, going back to Sanskrit sources.  Considering poetry as man’s alter ego, she is an avid explorer of the metric word. Former educationist, she is now a volunteer at Victoria and Albert museum and at The British Museum for the interactive program Hands On. Her poems have recently appeared on The Ekphrastic Review and Poetrywivenhoe. Previously, her research on the medieval manuscript The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander was published by The British Library and subsequently awarded by questia digital library a position 9 in one of their periodical selections 16 of the best publications on illuminated manuscripts.

**

Women Making Textiles

In shades of mud this corner of a painted courtyard:
doorways dark, ground – indeterminate – the shawls,
stone walls and human faces: all earth coloured.
The Andean village is cloaked in amber.
Three women in its shelter, like rope makers,
pass from hand to hand, a scarf of Prima Cotton,
herring-boned, a patterned skin, colour of dried blood.
How like a snake it looks, back zig-zagged with tyre marks, 
a martyred serpent which looped on racks of cactus
lies on the supple wrists of women: strong featured,
calmly checking every finished thread of textile woven 
on their working days:  a ritual, of sorts, 
one of many skills of hand a life supplies
in sacrificed, long zig zag patterns.

Dominic James

Dominic James (UK) lives in the Cotswolds near the source of the River Thames.  A longtime short story writer he has concentrated on poetry over the last decade or so: recently published in Poetry Salzburg Review and Lightenup online, his collection, Pilgrim Station is available from SPM Publications.

**

Practical Art

Three women
In a sun warmed room
examine a long strip
of finely woven cloth.
They hold it gently, carefully,
measuring the skill of the weaver
in the order of the weave,
approving the web of colors,
testing the texture of the web,
strong enough to depend on,
thick enough to last.
In this work they hold
the treasured goal
of a long apprenticeship 
that makes an art of useful things
without elaboration:
a simple form 
to please the eye
and fit the hand,
to comfort flesh,
and satisfy the heart,
that has its own requirements
for creation.

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse whose life long love of visual art and writing makes ekphrastic work a particular favorite. Her work has appeared frequently in the The Ekphrastic Review, as well as in many other journals and anthologies.

**

Authenticity

It’s what you hung your hat on,
celebrating primitive life
with archaic materials,
nonplussed by criticism 
you composed unadorned figures
to honor ten thousand years 
of Peruvian tradition−
spinning, dying, weaving 
delicate alpaca, llama, vicuña wool
with the same intricate care 
with which they braid 
their long, dark locks. 
Warm earth tones
radiate a sepia quality
forcing the indigenous subjects 
to appear aged before their time.  
Narrow-minded contemporaries
perceived you as subordinate,
like the Mary Oliver
of the South American art world, 
self-taught, deliberate
in depicting your cultural identity;
such a shame you were not lauded
for your ingenuity and purity. 

Elaine Sorrentino

Elaine Sorrentino, Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA, has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Haiku Universe, Global Poemic, Failed Haiku, and has won the monthly poetry challenge at wildamorris.blogspot.com.

**


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